


The Unturning

by Ark



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Grief/Mourning, Humor, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, On The Barricade, Past Character Death, Sex, Suffering, With Apologies To My Classics Professors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:55:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7970680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Come, Grantaire, look not amazed: you who so often spoke of me as Achilles and Euryalus. Did you think I never heard?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unturning

**Author's Note:**

> Well, my pals, it's been a while. Inspired by recent trips to the final Les Mis shows on Broadway, where I saw a softer Enjolras, and a grieving Grantaire, and both of them in need of resolution. Thanks to eirenical for encouraging me to see the last show and to my magnificent soemily for always betaing me better.

The sound of the low sob permeates the hallway. It stops Enjolras as he is about to descend the stair, a noise of such naked pain that the fine hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

The wounded are meant to be in the Musain’s main room, where Combeferre and Joly set up a field hospital. Under Combeferre’s attentive eye, they have not lost a man to injury for some hours; but every man reacts differently to a glancing blow. Some fear the doctor’s ministrations, and will retreat to solitude, like a kicked animal. Or perhaps one of their number, wounded, is ashamed of his state, afraid to burden the rest; well can Enjolras understand that inclination. 

It is possible he could alleviate some distress, so he crosses to the closest closed door and raps sharply upon it. He expects to be hailed, or to be met with sudden silence; but the keening continues, jagged, like a cry cut from a throat with a knife. Enjolras opens the door.

The small room has been stripped of furnishings: all is bare, everything is gone, dragged down and thrown into the street to build up the barricade. Even the curtains and curtain-rod are gone, and without a lamp the room is plunged into pitchy darkness unrelieved by the open window. The moon has chosen to hide her face on a night such as this.

On his knees in the corner, Grantaire has his dark head bowed. The sound of him is worse in the tiny square without the buffering door. He is bent double under the weight of it -- a grief so encompassing that Grantaire’s shoulders shake, and a rage so white-hot that the blistering curses he mutters through tears could strip the wooden floors of their varnish. 

Enjolras hesitates, then steps inside and shuts the door behind him. Grantaire does not look up or move, so Enjolras moves towards him. He clears his throat. 

His first thought is an uncharitable one. Grantaire never wanted the barricade, had mercilessly mocked their plans for months. He forswore the fight, but was caught in it regardless, and now he is trapped. Here, Enjolras thinks coldly, is a man so afraid to die that he will hide and cower and rant against God. 

He is considering turning on his heel to leave when Grantaire says, without lifting his head, addressing no one: “Ah, it should have been me!”

Wracked anew, Grantaire chokes on a name; and Enjolras remembers. He’s tried hard to push the scene from his mind. The small, broken body, all the light gone from bright eyes. The gutsy gamin -- chief gamin -- who saved them from the spy Javert’s treachery, who risked himself so bravely in the end. 

It was Grantaire who reached up to receive the undersized body when it was passed down from the barricade. Grantaire who cradled him and wiped the blood from the silent brow with his handkerchief. Now, when Enjolras remembers, he recalls that the boy had often been underfoot, buzzing around Grantaire, fetching him wine and receiving coin or sweets in return.

Enjolras frowns, uneasy, this sort of scene unexpected and new to him. He can inspire revolutionary fervor in a man, but giving comfort does not come naturally. “Grantaire.”

“Better for us all that it had been me,” Grantaire answers. “I have only wasted years, and he, so very few.” 

A fresh torrent of anguish seizes him, and Enjolras is afraid that the next wail will rise like a wave, crash down to be heard even by those below, who will rush in to find the source of the disturbance. To witness Grantaire in this state is certainly disturbing, and only serves to distract from the desperate work of the barricade. It is on Enjolras to quiet him, though he knows not how. 

Enjolras goes into a crouch beside Grantaire, then -- gingerly -- claps a hand to his shoulder. He has never touched Grantaire save to shake his hand upon their first meeting, or to try and pull the bottle from his hands when he has had too much. The strength of emotion seems to radiate through Grantaire’s sweat-soaked shirt. His cravat is undone and tugged loose, the shirt open at the neck, stained red: blood-red, wine-dark. 

“You do his memory credit in mourning,” Enjolras says, choosing words with care. “But come now, Grantaire. Would your young friend, so quick to laughter, desire to see you thus?”

Grantaire turns his head. Dark hair, dark as ink and lank with summer’s heat, obscures his eyes. His eyes are weary, wet, cheeks streaked with tears, the grief painted so starkly across his features that Enjolras barely knows him. Grantaire is a man transformed. To have his eyes tell it, he has aged a thousand years in a day.

It is so startling that Enjolras nearly draws back. But he has found in these last hours a reserve of fortitude and courage that even he, a proud man, did not know he possessed. He tightens his grip on Grantaire’s shoulder.

It is disconcerting to have Grantaire stare at him so blankly -- Grantaire, whose animated gaze often lingered on him, Grantaire who made a habit of gazing. If Grantaire recognizes Enjolras at all, he does not appear to be moved by his presence. His gaze is unfocused. He speaks as though Enjolras were a ghost, looks through him: “I swore to Gavroche I would protect him. I told him he would come to no harm. A lie! The last thing I said to him, a lie. Behold Grantaire, liar, and murderer of children.”

The bitter acidity of his words eats through Enjolras’ steely resolve. For a moment his heart aches in sympathy, and he feels something entirely new to him -- pity. He shakes his head, vehement, then shakes Grantaire, as though sense might be pressed upon him. “The guns of the King killed him. His blood is not on your hands. Lay blame where it belongs, and join us, if you would, to avenge him.”

Grantaire seems to see him then, and he tips back his head and laughs. His laughter is more terrible than his grief. Shrill and mocking, forced and false, it echoes in their close confines. “Oh, is it you, bold Phoebus, fresh from the battlements, clothed in golden raiment?” He sneers at the spill of Enjolras’ yellow hair down his back, then glances away. “Leave me. I did not ask for you to be here. You are the last person I should like to see. Go away.”

Anger and embarrassment rise in Enjolras, and on any other day he would have stood at once and gone without backward glance. He has little patience for Grantaire’s changeable moods under the best of circumstances. Grantaire might intrigue him, but there has never been time to puzzle him out.

Here at the barricade made of the Musain, waiting out the night to see if they will find reprieve from the people or slaughter from the Guard in the morning, the circumstances are bad enough to test any man’s conviction and strain his temper. It is not another day, however; there may never be another; and so Enjolras forces himself to keep a cooler head. 

It is clear that Grantaire seeks to goad him into leaving, so that he might resume his crushing grief. The barbs do not lodge for long on Grantaire’s tongue; already his chin has begun to quiver. When Enjolras sits still and does not go, the sour amusement leaves Grantaire’s face entirely, and it crumples. A sob he tries to stifle seizes him, so that all of him trembles under Enjolras’ hand.

Words did not work to break Grantaire from this spell. Enjolras is at a loss. He should fetch Combeferre, who is gentle and will know a better approach, or Joly or Bossuet, who love Grantaire well and perhaps could reach him through his suffering. But those friends are busy downstairs, fighting to keep death at bay from the wounded, and Enjolras is stubborn. 

Decided, Enjolras leans back against the wall, then reaches out and pulls Grantaire under the half-circle of his arm. At first Grantaire is pulled with resistance, like a stone uphill; but all at once the tension leaves him, and he collapses against Enjolras’ side, boneless and exhausted. He keeps his head bent, hair a veil over his eyes, and says nothing. Tears trickle down and wet the front of Enjolras’ vest.

The idea came from seeing other men embrace just so downstairs. Sometimes, thinks Enjolras, when words have lost meaning, there is only the affirmation that comes through touch. Had not Combeferre hugged him, had Courfeyrac not kissed both of his cheeks, when they saw the way Enjolras looked after old man Mabeuf met his end? Had the affection of his companions not restored him? 

For a long while they sit together in silence. Grantaire still weeps, but it is a quieter thing, not seeming to wrench him so; and for Enjolras the stillness is a welcome reprieve, a balm to his unquiet mind. He, too, is a man transformed in a day. He has killed, the act an abyss that threatens to open up and swallow him whole, should he but think upon it -- and he has watched good friends fall. 

The horror of losing Gavroche moved him deeply, though his regret is nothing so personal as Grantaire’s. Enjolras remembers thinking: who did they seek a better world for, if not unlucky children such as this? 

And if the Guard should shoot a slender youth so many years from manhood, what reprieve would any of them find? Gavroche’s death meant the death of them all. He does not know if the others understand this. Surely Grantaire knows, though. Grantaire always sees too much. 

So he holds onto Grantaire, and Grantaire leans against him, and they sit propped to the wall for an hour or more. At one point there is a tap on the door, and Courfeyrac sticks his tousled head inside. His eyes find Enjolras’ in the gloom, and he looks startled, then swiftly approving. He smiles as only Courfeyrac can, with reassuring levity; Enjolras nods back; Grantaire does not look up at all. After that Enjolras knows they will be left undisturbed. 

When Grantaire speaks again, it is so softly that Enjolras would have mistaken the sound for the stirring of wind were he not so close. He ducks his head to better make out the words.

“Do you believe in fate, Enjolras?”

The question, quietly put, is better than sobs or sharpness. Enjolras chews his lip, then says, “No. We make our own destinies. We must. I do not believe any event is preordained.”

“Perhaps I meant to say Fates,” says Grantaire. “Fair Clotho, the spinner of life-thread, wise Lachesis, who measured out how long we had, and unturnable Atropos, who cut the threads. Do you know why they called her unturnable?”

This is not so much a question; Enjolras knows that Grantaire, once started down a mythological road, barrels ahead; so Enjolras presses his lips and waits for the answer.

“None could bargain or broker with her, not even the King of the Gods, when she had decided your time was finished. All Gods and men yielded to the Fates. They sat outside and above the Pantheon. Atropos, the unturning, also called the inevitable, the inflexible, ever at work with her abhorred shears. She is here, on the barricade, even now. See her handiwork?” Grantaire lifts a listless hand, gestures to the window, the street below, the twisted fortress they built of broken wood and metal. 

“All day I could feel her scissors on my neck, and so I waited quite patiently to die; but she made a mistake, even Fates do that, and took Gavroche instead. He should not have stood so close to me.” Grantaire drops his hand heavily, his fingers clenched into a fist. “She will correct it soon enough, my Fate. I told Gavroche he would live, and I told myself I would step before any bullet in his path, so the one he took was intended for me. It will find me again, I know.”

The depths of such loss and self-recrimination are unparalleled in Enjolras’ experience. There is no use in arguing with Grantaire on the logic of ancient theology, or of magicked bullets. Instead, he asks what he has wondered since finding Grantaire bent double. “What was this child to you?”

For a moment Enjolras is afraid to have raised the subject, certain that Grantaire will lapse back into despair. But Grantaire’s voice fills with wistful fondness, and his speech is forthcoming: 

“A wild urchin was Gavroche,” he says. “The Master of the Paris gamins, did you know, who kept the others safe and fed. Clever, with a mind like a trap for the songs I taught him. You heard him sing today, even as he died.” Grantaire coughs, the words catching in his throat. “He made his home in the Elephant. But sometimes, when it was too cold or hot, he would deign to use the little cot I put up for him in my parlor. He would never stay for long, nor accept any gift I tried to give him, past some bread and cheese, and once, a red cap that he liked very much.” 

Grantaire’s tears are soaking through Enjolras’ vest, press damp against his skin. Enjolras sits listening, staring down at his own hands rubbing together too tightly. 

Grantaire says, “A fiercely independent creature, proud by necessity. You would have enjoyed his opinions, I think, and he could have told you more about the barbarity of men and women, and the harshness of life, than any book has taught you. But now he is gone.”

Enjolras opens his mouth. Closes it. He had no idea that the scampering motherless boy, who carried their messages and snagged their scraps from the table, had any connection past the superficial kindness Grantaire showed him. Once, he recalls now, Gavroche in attendance at a meeting had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, with his head pillowed on Grantaire’s knee. Bossuet made some joke about foundlings, then gone pale under Feuilly’s glare, and the matter dropped. Enjolras, declaiming fiery rhetoric, had no time for the diversion, and had not paid attention.

“A little like a brother,” Grantaire is saying. “He reminded me first of my sister’s child. A little like the son I knew I would not father. But none could lay claim to Gavroche. He would not have family. He damned the word. And so I helped him when he let me.” Grantaire’s jaw is clenched. “It was not enough.”

I am sorry, Enjolras wants to say, but that -- that is not enough. Grantaire will not say so, but Enjolras is also liable for the child’s murder. Without the spark that Enjolras lit, there would be no barricade here, no undug graves. Instead, Enjolras says, “You are generous, Grantaire, and reveal a kind heart you keep hidden.” 

It is difficult to reconcile the rabblerouser who rails against their cause with the man under Enjolras’ arm who weeps over the gift of a red cap. But perhaps it is not so hard after all. Perhaps some of the tenderest souls hide behind a sort of spiked armor as protection. 

Even now it is so, for Grantaire responds to the compliment with a laugh to deflect it -- not as cutting as his laughter earlier, but a harsh sort of bark. “You would not say so, if you could see what is in my heart.”

“No? After what you have told me, I am quite sure of the opinion.”

“No,” says Grantaire. “For in that great cavernous space beneath my breast there is nothing save a portrait of you, _in flagrante delicto._ ” 

This time it is Enjolras who laughs. He tries to temper it, so that Grantaire does not take the laughter as directed at him, but rather the absurdity of the statement. “I hope you have me in profile,” he replies. “I have been told my nose is stronger from the right.” 

Slowly, Grantaire raises his head. He pushes the curtain of hair back from his eyes, and his blue eyes, though bloodshot, are lit with sudden light. “The nose is perfect from every angle.”

“I will trust our artist, then.” It should feel strange, thinks Enjolras, or uncomfortable, to be addressing the nature of Grantaire’s affections toward him, with Grantaire so near; but it is not strange. After a day of blood and death and grief, to speak of love is most entertaining. It is a welcome respite, absent the fears and frustrations Enjolras once attached to the subject. What is physical love when you have killed a man? It is nothing, a distraction from their reality, which is terrifying to look too closely at. 

Yet Grantaire is staring at him, jaw slightly askew and disbelieving. He spoke brashly, Enjolras guesses, in another attempt to drive Enjolras from the room. He had revealed too much, shown himself to be humane and soft-hearted, and attempted a new method of making Enjolras retreat.

It does not work. Enjolras doesn’t budge. The dazed look upon Grantaire’s face is better than the rictus of pain, and the fire in his eyes has dried up the tears. 

“Come, Grantaire, look not amazed: you who so often spoke of me as Achilles and Euryalus. Did you think I never heard?”

“I was quite certain that you had not,” Grantaire manages. “Or if you heard, that you did not take the meaning.”

“You think me boorish then, uncultured,” says Enjolras, breezy, rather enjoying the abashed expression that twists Grantaire’s mouth. “You believe I have never visited the Louvre, nor opened a book that was not a tract on social philosophy.” 

“I did not say--”

“Perhaps if you intended to be subtle about your tastes, you should have chosen other references,” says Enjolras. “I have a book, published by a secret press, that is nothing but a discourse on Achilles’ adventures with Patroclus at Troy. Inside their tent.”

“What!” exclaims Grantaire, the twitch of his mouth becoming an actual smile. “Can such fine marble know the ways of the flesh?”

“Marble is the mask you see me wear,” Enjolras allows. “Just as you wrap yourself in cynics’ garb. Take it off, I say, and we are both something else underneath.”

Grantaire works his jaw. His dark eyebrows are knit. “Why do you say these things to me?”

Enjolras shrugs. “A diversion.” With his free hand he thumbs Grantaire’s cheek, where the tracks of tears are finished. “For some minutes you have not thought on your grief. For some minutes I have not thought on my guilt, that the -- that the fates -- of our friends below will be cut short on my account. My hubris and miscalculation. The people have failed to rally and morning brings the end. You and I know this well enough. Do we not?”

After a moment Grantaire nods. His eyes are enormous. His hair is a messy halo, black curls in contrast to the red of his lips. He bites his lip. 

“Anyhow,” says Enjolras, surprised, and not surprised, by the sudden tug in his belly, “It does not matter much. If we have mere hours left, words are transitory, actions are forgotten when we are.” He swallows, tasting the kind of pessimism that Grantaire must know too well. “They will not carve statues of us.”

“You are wrong,” says Grantaire. “One epoch’s upstart is a hero to the next, and none who have seen or heard you will forget that they glimpsed a man who meant to change the world.” His gaze drops. “As for me, I have aspirations to be a footnote near your name.”

“Grantaire--”

“Never you mind,” says Grantaire hurriedly, studying the golden climb of buttons along the red seam of Enjolras’ vest. “Only know that it does matter, to me. It matters very much. I have loved you too long to hear you speak of your destruction unmoved, or to hear you speak of Achilles and Patroclus unstirred. Ah, God, Enjolras, just to hear you speak has always been enough to--”

When Enjolras kisses him Grantaire’s mouth is poised mid-word and tastes of salt from tears. He intended, he thinks, a kind of chaste kiss, to stop the spiral of Grantaire’s speech, to thank him for the keenness of attachment Enjolras has so long put off. If Enjolras let the idea of Grantaire’s admiration enter into his thoughts from time to time, in the dead of night when any thoughts are permitted, he never imagined that it would -- that it would matter.

The kiss, intended to be chaste, such as he might buss Combeferre or Feuilly in parting, does not stay chaste. Grantaire’s mouth opens underneath his, in shock, opens like a flower blooming. 

Enjolras is shocked by the lightning that courses through his veins. Following instinct that is faster to the mark than logic, he slips his tongue past Grantaire’s teeth, and quickly learns the shape of them. 

Salt and the remnants of wine. Smoke from a pipe lit with their friends on the barricade. And a new taste, one that Enjolras has never known before, that must be uniquely Grantaire’s, that is intoxicating. He chases it, closing his arm around Grantaire, tucking him in with intention this time. 

At first Grantaire is still and stunned under his mouth. But when Enjolras does not draw away, when Enjolras does the opposite, and draws him forward, Grantaire responds with every enthusiasm. He breathes quickly through his nose so that their lips need not part; his eyes are open and wondering and encouraging; his tongue is a delicate dart that meets Enjolras’ and feeds the firestorm in Enjolras’ belly upon contact. 

How long they kiss Enjolras cannot say. It is some minutes, and perhaps a year, and possibly an eternity. The act is new to him, and there is much to learn: how lower lips may be carefully bitten, how dextrous tongues truly are, with a language all their own, how a hand fisted tight into Grantaire’s hair holds him at the desired angle. 

It is Grantaire who breaks the kiss at last. He looks dizzy, disoriented, mouth flush from pressure and the impression of Enjolras’ teeth. “Enjolras,” he breathes, as though pleading for confirmation of that fact.

“The same,” says Enjolras, but he is not. This day has altered him in too many ways to count, turned him around, spun him until he lost his bearings. 

To kiss a man -- to kiss Grantaire -- is the very last of the events he anticipated for his final night on Earth; but it is not at all displeasing. In fact it is the obverse of that, and now he knows what it feels like to have lust rise in his blood. He knows what it feels like to lose himself, even for an instant, in focused dedication to another; and he thinks that he understands Grantaire then better than he ever has. Something yearning awakens in him and will not be put off. 

Especially when Grantaire says, “Maybe Atropos preserved me so that I might have that. The Fates are cruel but not entirely without mercy.” He takes hold of Enjolras’ hand and sets a kiss to the wrist, at the pulse-point. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Enjolras blinks at word and deed. “Are we finished, then?”

“Are we...not?” Grantaire looks up at him, each syllable shaped with utmost caution. 

Enjolras shakes his head. “That is for you to say. I am untested in such matters. I will not assume, for I have never made any such assumption. But it was good to kiss you.”

“It was,” says Grantaire, and he closes his eyes and then opens them. He seems to stare at nothing. “It was. You are. Fate is capricious indeed. Am I to know you, just once, and nevermore? Yes, that tracks. Who am I, who lived to darkness, to be touched now by the sun? So low, so far below your notice. In life we could not see each other but in death the veil is lifted. Ghosts will touch when they can. We are nearly ghosts. It is well.”

“Erm,” says Enjolras, diplomatic. “Does that mean--?”

“Yes,” says Grantaire, breaking from his reverie. Now his gaze is straightforward. Does not waver. “A man should fuck before he dies, should he like to do so. You may fuck me, should you like. I will show you how. It is a simple enough thing.”

“I,” starts Enjolras. Blood rushes to his cheeks, and far lower, which decides him. What has he to lose or gain, now, with only hours left to him? “Show me, then.”

Grantaire takes a breath. Then he sits up quite straight, and leaves the bend of Enjolras’ arm, moving to kneel before him. He starts to undress. First the cravat, unknotted, tossed away. Then his green vest unbuttoned, cast free. The shirt goes next. “Do you know your Plato?”

Enjolras is watching with great interest the revelation of skin. Grantaire’s body is lithe, lightly muscular, and altogether appealing; he is kept fighting fit from boxing and fencing and dancing. Grantaire often bragged upon these sessions during meetings, but Enjolras never thought to encounter their results: well-turned arms, squared shoulders, the flat expanse of stomach where a faint dark trail of hair disappears beneath his waistband. 

“Plato?” Enjolras’ voice emerges pitched oddly higher. 

Grantaire does not smirk, but it is a near thing. “Plato. Namely, his _Symposium_. Namely, Aristophanes’ speech. Oh, you _are_ uncultured.”

“I have more Latin than Greek,” Enjolras protests. “Tell it to me, then.”

“All the great men and philosophers of the age were gathered at a party, drinking,” says Grantaire, and now his hands are busy pushing Enjolras’ vest from his shoulders. “They began to argue upon the nature of love. When it was Aristophanes’ turn to speak, he told a story of how we came to be.” 

The easy patter of the story serves to distract and calm Enjolras’ nerves. Enjolras lifts his arms above his head, and Grantaire peels free his shirt; then he stops and looks his fill a while; then he drops his head to the curve of Enjolras’ neck, and presses his lips there. He speaks into Enjolras’ skin. “How we were born as one, then split apart.”

“Fascinating,” says Enjolras. Emboldened by Grantaire’s caresses, he reaches for his waist, goes up to his knees so that they are pressed together, chest to chest, flesh to flesh.

“The Greeks had more sense about a good many things,” says Grantaire into his neck, between kisses open-mouthed. “They did not try to turn man from how he was inclined, but sought to explain why he was. And so Aristophanes explained: when we were first made in the dawn of the Earth, there were three sexes, man, woman, and those two blended; and all of us had two heads, and four arms and legs, and so on. We were mighty, and strong, and reckless in our strength. We attacked the Gods.” 

Grantaire moves back, lowers himself down upon the floor. He puts up his hips and strips free of his shoes and trousers without hesitation, but with his eyes on Enjolras. Enjolras, for his part, stares: at shapely calves and powerful thighs, at the proud length of Grantaire’s cock with its base of hair dark as ink. 

“The Gods considered destroying us, for our impertinence,” Grantaire continues, and he takes his cock in hand, strokes once, twice, then finds a rhythm. “But in their wisdom they knew that separation was worse than obliteration. They found a way to make us subservient. Zeus sent down his bolts of lighting, and cut each of us in two. Man divided from man, woman from woman, man and woman parted. And without our better selves were were lost. ‘Each desiring his other half, they came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces,’ Aristophanes said, ‘longing to grow into one, they began to die from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart.’” 

Grantaire lets go of his cock. Enjolras, who had been staring again, his own arousal grown to newfound heights, nods as though a question has been put to him. His fingers feel clumsy on the fall-fronts of his trousers, but Grantaire’s gaze is on him and burning. Enjolras finds that he is eager and unafraid. Unclothed, bared, he advances, and drops down beside Grantaire.

“Zeus took pity at last,” says Grantaire. His hand goes to Enjolras’ cock, his knowing hand soon skillfully at work. His expression is shaded with profound appreciation for the task. “He let Apollo shape our misshapen forms into comelier beings, and he moved the more productive organs to a convenient position, where we might learn to enjoy them.” His grip on Enjolras is impossibly, wonderfully tight, and Enjolras bites back a moan. No one else has touched him like this. The difference between his own hand and Grantaire’s is a shattering development. “Thus we created the act of love, in imitation of how we had once been joined.” 

When Grantaire takes back his hand, Enjolras is fully hard, his heart beating fit to burst in his chest. He watches wide-eyed as Grantaire moves his fingers to his mouth, and pushes three between his own lips. They reemerge shiny and slick. Then Grantaire reaches between his legs, and begins to open himself. His eyes flutter shut for a time, and a muscle jumps in his cheek; but he shows no discomfort, and he does not stop the story, though it meanders more now. 

“Now that we knew love, declared Aristophanes, ah...now, he said, ‘If man came to man they might be satisfied, and rest, and go their ways to the business of life.’ He was a complex soul, Aristophanes. I like him quite a lot. In another life I would ask you to his plays at the theater. Ah, ah. Yes, to feel your lips upon my brow is most ideal...Where was I? Oh...Usually he was quite a good deal more comedic, but about lovemaking Aristophanes was serious, according to Plato. ‘This meeting and melting into one another,’ he called it. ‘This becoming one instead of two.’ In the end it is easy, Enjolras. We need but close our eyes and remember that we already know what it is to be whole.”

Grantaire lies with his head back upon the wooden floor, his lower body arched, his fingers in motion. His hair is the color of night against the pale grain. He opens his eyes, and holds out his free hand to Enjolras. Grantaire’s stream of ready words leaves him abruptly, and the air between them falls silent. Through the small window the obsidian sky is brightening. Enjolras laces their fingers together.

He stretches out above Grantaire, nervousness bunching in his shoulders. Grantaire’s face is too serious, and Enjolras knows it must be an echo of his own consternation. But then Grantaire shows him how they must wet their palms to ready Enjolras’ cock, and the hilarity of the extended licking of hands, the utter ridiculousness of it all, breaks them both into laughter; and so they are laughing when Grantaire guides Enjolras inside him. Then they are not. 

Enjolras is kissing Grantaire, and sinking in, and Grantaire was right: it is a new sensation, fiercely, terrifically new, but Enjolras knows how to proceed without being told. He doesn’t close his eyes, though. He will remember every breath of this until he breathes no more.

Grantaire receives him. There’s not any other word that fits, and _they_ fit, Enjolras is discovering, all too well. Is it always like this? He will ask Grantaire when he is done with Grantaire’s tongue. 

He does not think it would be the same with another person. Another would not part his thighs the way Grantaire does, and lift his legs to wrap around Enjolras’ waist, to urge him on. Another might not have round blue eyes like Grantaire, and rake his nails so encouragingly down Enjolras’ back. No one looks at Enjolras like Grantaire does, and he is accustomed to drawing attentive looks. No, there is no one who would have him like Grantaire. 

Other men have had Grantaire, however. Other men have _dared_. A sudden possessiveness wells within Enjolras, irrational, primal. He withdraws and reclaims with a hard turn of his hips, and Grantaire shapes a shout that Enjolras swallows. He does so again, then again. Oh, but this is good. 

It is so good that the idea that flashes unbidden -- that Grantaire would have welcomed him like this for months, had him in a proper bed, laughed with him and loved him -- is a palpable ache. Enjolras tries to banish the line of thought by thrusting deeper, then deeper still. If he can become submerged in Grantaire he will forget all else. 

Enjolras is young and his blood is up and he has energy to spare, but he must have more air, so he pulls back a little, lets Grantaire’s lip escape his teeth last. His knees scrape on the floor from his exertion, but a man with a death sentence cares little enough for knees. 

No, no. Think not on that. Not yet. Not now. See instead how Grantaire stares back at him. Mark how Grantaire tangles fingers in his hair, and how he tugs. Feel how Grantaire meets every thrust and takes him so well. How they slot together as though made for it. Could Aristophanes have told a true story?

All stories have truth in them.

Grantaire is saying his name as he never has before, over and over, like an invocation. The need to possess him grows sharper, grows teeth. 

Enjolras pulls Grantaire’s hand from his hair, catches the other, cinches fingers around his wrists. Pins his wrists flat to the floor while he drives inside him. A thrust for every time he should have had Grantaire before.

Grantaire cries out, muffles desperation against Enjolras’ chest. Enjolras realizes that he has spoken his last thought aloud, but he is past all caution now. 

He is learning why there are so many base words associated with this activity. As he speeds his motion he thinks on them: fucking, rutting, and one that Grantaire had used earlier, on the barricade -- screwing. There is something savage in the process, in this seizing, taking, the lodging of his pleasure within a yielding body. It is heady and illuminating and all too tempting to continue apace. His hands are like shackles on Grantaire’s wrists and his cock cleaves far with every stroke. He could continue on like this for hours, Enjolras considers, and stop for nothing save the return of cannon-fire.

But when Grantaire gives a sharp gasp Enjolras pauses, buried to the hilt. It is no great strain to stay like that. It is, in fact, extremely desirable. _This becoming one instead of two_ , the Greek described it. Like this, it is hard to say where they start and end. They are blended. But the sound from Grantaire -- “Say if I have hurt you.”

“You could not,” assures Grantaire. His voice is at a low register. Sweat dyes his hair darker, midnight locks across his brow. He rolls his hips to show his readiness. “It is the opposite. There are some angles of approach that feel better than others, and you hit upon the best.” 

Enjolras flushes at the praise, tucks away the knowledge, then tries to repeat the exact same movement. Grantaire groans, and his cock strains in the space between them, which only serves to excite Enjolras more. 

His excitement is such that he might well finish like this -- fast, and pounding, a race to the end-line. Then he considers all that Grantaire has been through today, the terrible sadness that drew Enjolras to him in the first place, and it makes him slow down. His next incursion is much gentler, a sweet slide that sheathes him in Grantaire without the slap of skin on skin.

He takes his hands from Grantaire’s wrists. He threads the fingers of one hand through Grantaire’s hair, the better to position him for kissing, and with the other seeks and finds Grantaire’s cock. It is long and heavy in his palm, and spectacularly responsive. His grip serves to make Grantaire curse, and lock his teeth on Enjolras’ lower lip, in an attempt to avert further curses. 

Excellent as it had felt to heatedly claim Grantaire, it is even better to move with careful purpose inside him. Now every thrust is intentional, seeking the spot that makes Grantaire’s wide eyes much wider. To kiss while they are joined is ready fuel to Enjolras’ satisfaction and stamina. He feels himself find a relaxed tempo, perfectly thorough. With every forward push he fists Grantaire’s cock and soon enough it is both of them who are gasping, thrilled exhalations of air passed from mouth to mouth.

Grantaire tosses his head, his body arching up to seal to Enjolras’, and he breaks away to say, his eyes glinting with fever and good humor both: “Deceiver with an angel’s mien. You have done this before.”

“Never,” swears Enjolras. “But you were right. I had only to remember that I already knew how, by ancient birthright.”

“You have now, perhaps, more Greek than Latin.”

“Perhaps. Yet Virgil springs to mind. Third eclogue. ‘You’ll not escape now: I’ll come whenever you call.’”

Grantaire’s delighted laughter is the first genuine ring of it all evening -- richly musical, unhindered, untainted. “Enjolras. In every way you astound me. How I adore you!”

“Can I, then?” And Enjolras strokes Grantaire’s cock as he asks, to test if Grantaire is ready as well to join him. By the way Grantaire responds, he knows that they are in accord. He meets Grantaire’s eyes steadily. “Within you. I should like to.”

Grantaire stares back at length without his usual riposte. His cheeks are rose-colored. “I insist upon it.”

“Then I will obey.” Enjolras’ thrusts now are smooth and sure. Knowing that each could be the one that finishes him, he savors every inch gained and lost, drawing them out, moving against Grantaire with a rhythm that is profound because it is the oldest one -- old as the dawn of time and Earth and man. What had Aristophanes said? _This meeting and melting._

Grantaire meets him, hip to hip, lip to lip, eye to eye, his arms and legs around Enjolras, and Enjolras melts into Grantaire. When his body gives over and he spills, held inside and so much desired, it is the fulfillment of a perfect fusion. When Grantaire, with help of Enjolras’ insistent hand, makes an ecstatic sound and follows him, pulsing and striping their skin, it is because they are so in sync there could be no other result. 

He holds tightly to Grantaire throughout, surprised after the success of lovemaking that its release brings even greater pleasures -- he thought there could be nothing better than the push-pull, but potent joy is passing through him, coursing head to toe in waves that do not break. He murmurs Grantaire’s name, which could be his name then as well.

“Dearest,” Grantaire is saying, somewhere close by, and in Enjolras’ ear and in his heart, “Dear one. You cannot know--”

“‘Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, were to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, 'What do you mortals want of one another?’’” Enjolras eases out of Grantaire, with every regret at not being able to remain longer, but enjoying the play of mingled euphoria and dawning realization on Grantaire’s face. He lies by Grantaire’s side, propped up on an arm to watch him.

Grantaire’s mouth makes an astonished circle, and then he shoves at Enjolras’ shoulder. “You told me you did not know the speech!”

“Every schoolboy reads Plato. I wanted to hear you speak it.” 

“Your duplicity gravely wounds me. I retract all praise I intended to give your breathtaking performance on this account.”

Enjolras grins at the roundabout compliment. “I did not lie. I merely asked to hear your interpretation. Either way, it is my turn at Aristophanes.” He clears his throat, seeks to clear his pleasure-muddled head, grasping after lines once painstakingly copied down to memory. “And Hephaestus the forge-god said, 'I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one. You will live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death, in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two -- ‘“

This time it is Grantaire who kisses with intention to quiet a speech. He tilts towards Enjolras to catch his mouth and then continues the momentum, climbing atop and astride him. No more words are needed then; they kiss for a long time uninterrupted. 

To have Grantaire above him is arousing indeed, and if they had a bed and an uncomplicated stretch of hours ahead Enjolras thinks they might make love again, and in lieu of the bed perhaps attempt the wall. But the morning is nearly risen, and what friends are awake must be wondering after them -- God knows the innuendos Courfeyrac has already sewn -- and it is not to be. 

Still, it is enough. This is more than Enjolras imagined he would have, in a life spent denying his needs when others needed so much more than he. Now, though the end is close, he is content.

He has not dwelled upon his guilt and fears for quite some time, and he flatters himself that Grantaire’s mourning-shroud was cast aside as long; and Grantaire is kissing him with enough fervor that it is possible he somehow overheard Enjolras’ thoughts about the wall. 

"Grantaire." Enjolras halts the kiss but cups his cheek. “We must rest at least a little. There is much to be done.”

“You may rest. I will do all of the work,” says Grantaire, rocking his hips to show how. Enjolras bites his own tongue to keep from readily agreeing. Once given the taste of this, he is hungry for more; famished; a starved man at the all-too-willing banquet of Grantaire.

But Grantaire reads his expression, translates the tired lines upon Enjolras’ brow, and is already dismounting with a sigh. He rifles in the pile of their clothes and uses the wadded-up length of his cravat to clean them off. They dress slowly. By the time they are covered Grantaire is looking at Enjolras almost shyly, none of the droll confidence from moments before. 

“May I lie with you until morning?” Grantaire asks, made up of eyelashes as he looks down. 

“As you would.” Enjolras is relieved at not having to be the one to ask Grantaire to stay. He puts out his arm, and Grantaire pillows his head upon it, curls up against him.

“Enjolras. Why did you speak that part from the _Symposium_?”

“If we are soon to die, it strikes me that after what we have shared I should like to see your shade in the underworld.” He reaches for Grantaire’s hand and closes their fingers tightly together.

Grantaire gives a small, strained laugh. “You would let the God of blacksmiths bind us together?”

“It is we who have done that,” reasons Enjolras. “Let Hephaestus with his hammer and anvil try to tear us apart, or any other Gods. Let Zeus keep his promise that if we are rebellious, he will use his trick of lightning-bolts again, and slice us into thirds, to hop about with one arm and leg.” 

“Hush.” Grantaire taps a finger to Enjolras’ lips. “The Gods are not dead; they are merely asleep; and they might hear you in their dreaming. If they stir they will envy me, who has received more of a bounty than any mortal should have. A giant eagle will be sent to duly collect you, while a wild boar will appear to gore me, and--” 

Enjolras attempts to stem the tide of words by catching the errant finger between his teeth, but eventually Grantaire regathers his thoughts: “You will be carried to Olympus on such a feathery bed, and anointed with fine oils, and they will place a wreath of laurels on your flaxen head. Zeus will plead, not command, that you should be his cup-bearer, but you will tell the King of the Gods that you serve no one, and he will destroy a continent in his rage. Next Apollo will attempt to cajole you, by offering up that you are his rival in beauty, but you know you have eclipsed him, and leave him to weep beside his harp. Then Hermes, swift-footed, quick-witted, will ply you with poetry, and with trickery, but you see past all falsehoods with clear eyes, nor are you susceptible to honeyed verse. Now, Dionysus--”

“What a mind you have,” says Enjolras, releasing the captured finger, unsure whether he is meant to smile. Grantaire’s voice lacks mirth, and he sounds earnest, as though he has lain awake before at night and considered how the Pantheon might woo Enjolras. Knowing Grantaire it is not far beyond the realm of possibility.

“I am more a mouth,” says Grantaire. He lifts his eyebrows. “And though I cannot offer cups of beaten bronze or continents, I beg you to allow me to use mine in your service before the day is out.”

“Grantaire.” But Enjolras does not say nay. “You are incorrigible.”

“Incorrect. I am in love. It is a different affliction.”

“If you love me,” says Enjolras, deciding. “Let me rest now, and put your mouth to the service of rousing me later.”

Never has a man shut his eyes so quickly as Grantaire. He gives an imitation of a snore to show his compliance to such a pact, and then Enjolras does smile. But Grantaire’s brain is ever teeming, restless, and before Enjolras can sleep he hears Grantaire say: 

“I was wrong, I think. I do not know why Atropos took Gavroche. That Fate is unknowable, and I presumed to guess her motives. The others, though, may be divined. It occurs to me now that since I met you, Clotho spun the line that bound us, and Lachesis measured out my life to yours. When that is cut, I shall go too, and be glad of it.”

“Enough,” says Enjolras, closing his eyes. “I cannot hear you say that you will die for me. I am not a cause. I only help bear one aloft.”

“Let each man choose his war. I say, instead, that you are the standard that I rally to.” Grantaire quiets then, when Enjolras does not press him; and Enjolras thinks that he has stilled when he hears soft words of Latin whispered in the dark, like a prayer said before sleeping.

“What was that?”

“Nothing -- some bit of Virgil only. It was you started it and made me think in eclogues. I did not mean to disturb you. Rest, Euryalus, and soon enough I will show you a better way to wake up.”

“Goodnight, Grantaire.” Enjolras had heard him, and as he drifts he considers what Grantaire spoke like a plea to any who might be listening:

_O if you’d only live with me in the lowly countryside  
and a humble cottage, shooting at the deer._

When Enjolras sleeps, he dreams that such a thing could be so. When Grantaire awakens him, it is with the passion that he promised. Outside the window the sun is high upon a new day, the last.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://et-in-arkadia.tumblr.com) if you would like to hold my hand and talk of revolutions or who is hotter, Dionysus or Hermes (it's Hermes, but Dionysus throws a better party). Come say hey.


End file.
